°Liquefaction

September 22, 2009

… there is no foundation in nature or in natural law, why a set of words upon a parchment should convey the dominion of land; why the son should have a right to exclude his fellow creatures from a determinate spot of ground, because his father had done so, before him … - William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769).

And here’s a pdf for the frontier household piece.

Filed under: Biowar + Laboratories + Borders + Democracy + Marx + Keynes + Rights
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°Pogroms pt2 - nomadi, clandestini, rifiuti

May 22, 2008


Filed under: Biowar + Borders + Democracy
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°Pogroms, pt1 - Amakwere-kwere


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°Enjoying democracy

April 15, 2008

From Rednecks, Eggheads and Blackfellas, by Gillian Cowlishaw, in the chapter titled “Enjoying Democracy”:

the paraphernalia of everyday life on a station was a compelling element in the pastoralists’ domination of their untutored workers; the mastery of pragmatic technology confirmed their grasp of the meaning of the world. It is technologies of governance, systems of political representation, of funding and accountability and practices known as democracy, which are now being taught with the same assumptions as were attached to farming technologies in an earlier time. These are the necessary tools for the Aboriginal people’s future, an invariant reality, a morally neutral common sense. Aborigines are now being enticed into exercising the same rights as whitefellas, rights which are supposed to ensure that we are all equal citizens.

Sharply ironic.

Filed under: Labour + Biowar + Democracy + Rights
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°Reconciling one’s self

March 25, 2008

An extract from Mbembe’s “Passages to Freedom: The Politics of Racial Reconciliation in South Africa” (Public Culture, 20:1, 2008):

Filed under: Biowar + Democracy + Mbembe
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°Iustitium

February 11, 2008

I await the Second Coming, amidst the state of emergency. It looks a lot like an episode of Battlestar Galactica. Really. Update: Very much like that episode, as it turns out.

Filed under: Democracy + theologico-politico
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°Scars

January 31, 2008

This, from Michael O’Donnell’s review of Darius Rejali’s Torture and Democracy:

Rejali’s provocative thesis is that most clean tortures were actually born in democracies, especially imperial Britain and France. He persuasively argues that the rise of clean torture was a reaction to transparency and monitoring in democratic states: Torturers could carry on despite public scrutiny as long as they left no scars. Although Rejali does not discuss it, this thesis plays out daily in the American legal system. Immigration courts, for instance, handle thousands of asylum applications every year, and judges usually demand that alleged torture victims produce evidence of scarring or hospitalization. No scars means no torture, and the applicant is sent home.

Filed under: Borders + Democracy + Rights
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